Tool for Visualizing external / internal metod calls

[Linus Nikander]

After trying to manually reverse-engineer a piece of code i've been handed
using Visio I figure someone must have developed a tool that can do
automatically in 5 minutes what took me 2 hours.

What I need is a tool that i can tell to "start with this method call, and
show me what happens" . The tool would then go through the sourcecode
visually mapping dependencies for that particular call. Prefrebly i'd be
allowed to specify which calls I want to be part of the resulting diagram
(internal calls, external calls, object instatiation). The result would
ideally be shown in an easy to understand graphical format whice i'd be
allowed to add my own comments to.

Anyone know of a tool that fulfills any/all of the above ? I've reverse
engineered the code using Rationals XDE, but within XDE I haven't found a
tool to help me trace the dependencies of a specific "top-level" method
call. The XDE overview genereated was probably correct in itself. The
problem was that I've got several thousand classes of essentially "unknown"
sourcecode to try and understand, getting all of it in a single diagram
doesn't help much, i need to be able to drill down further.

//Linus Nikander - li***@nikander.net

[Robert Klemme]

"Linus Nikander" <li***@nikander.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:ax***************@news1.bredband.com...

What I need is a tool that i can tell to "start with this method call, and show me what happens" . The tool would then go through the sourcecode
visually mapping dependencies for that particular call. Prefrebly i'd be
allowed to specify which calls I want to be part of the resulting diagram (internal calls, external calls, object instatiation). The result would
ideally be shown in an easy to understand graphical format whice i'd be
allowed to add my own comments to.

Anyone know of a tool that fulfills any/all of the above ? I've reverse
engineered the code using Rationals XDE, but within XDE I haven't found a tool to help me trace the dependencies of a specific "top-level" method
call. The XDE overview genereated was probably correct in itself. The
problem was that I've got several thousand classes of essentially "unknown" sourcecode to try and understand, getting all of it in a single diagram
doesn't help much, i need to be able to drill down further.

You could use ALF[1] to trace method invocations. ALF allows you to
specify classes and packages to trace. For more selective evaluation you
could easily write a script that massages the output, or at least selects
only those lines that contain the method you want to inspect. This way
you don't get a graphical output but you can recognize the calling tree
via indention.

Another option is to use doxygen [2] which generates a very nice,
hyperlinked documentation much like JavaDoc but with additional graphical
class diagrams (including dependencies), that can also be navigated. And
the source code is included and linked.

Regards

robert
[1] http://alfj.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.doxygen.org

[Linus Nikander]

Thank you for the response.

AFL only seems to trace runtime invocations. As I want to trace mainly EJB:s
running within a container this would be a bit awkward. Apart from that it
does seem to feature just about the things I'm looking for. Do you know of
any tools that can generate the same information from source-files and not
runtime-invocation ?

Yours,

Linus

"Robert Klemme" <bo******@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:bd************@ID-52924.news.dfncis.de...

"Linus Nikander" <li***@nikander.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:ax***************@news1.bredband.com...

What I need is a tool that i can tell to "start with this method call,

and

show me what happens" . The tool would then go through the sourcecode
visually mapping dependencies for that particular call. Prefrebly i'd be
allowed to specify which calls I want to be part of the resulting

diagram

(internal calls, external calls, object instatiation). The result would
ideally be shown in an easy to understand graphical format whice i'd be
allowed to add my own comments to.

Anyone know of a tool that fulfills any/all of the above ? I've reverse
engineered the code using Rationals XDE, but within XDE I haven't found

a

tool to help me trace the dependencies of a specific "top-level" method
call. The XDE overview genereated was probably correct in itself. The
problem was that I've got several thousand classes of essentially

"unknown"

sourcecode to try and understand, getting all of it in a single diagram
doesn't help much, i need to be able to drill down further.

You could use ALF[1] to trace method invocations. ALF allows you to
specify classes and packages to trace. For more selective evaluation you
could easily write a script that massages the output, or at least selects
only those lines that contain the method you want to inspect. This way
you don't get a graphical output but you can recognize the calling tree
via indention.

Another option is to use doxygen [2] which generates a very nice,
hyperlinked documentation much like JavaDoc but with additional graphical
class diagrams (including dependencies), that can also be navigated. And
the source code is included and linked.

Regards

robert
[1] http://alfj.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://www.doxygen.org

[Ira Baxter]

"Linus Nikander" <li***@nikander.net> wrote in message
news:ax***************@news1.bredband.com...

After trying to manually reverse-engineer a piece of code i've been handed
using Visio I figure someone must have developed a tool that can do
automatically in 5 minutes what took me 2 hours.

What I need is a tool that i can tell to "start with this method call, and
show me what happens" . The tool would then go through the sourcecode
visually mapping dependencies for that particular call. Prefrebly i'd be
allowed to specify which calls I want to be part of the resulting diagram
(internal calls, external calls, object instatiation). The result would
ideally be shown in an easy to understand graphical format whice i'd be
allowed to add my own comments to.

Anyone know of a tool that fulfills any/all of the above ? I've reverse
engineered the code using Rationals XDE, but within XDE I haven't found a
tool to help me trace the dependencies of a specific "top-level" method
call. The XDE overview genereated was probably correct in itself. The
problem was that I've got several thousand classes of essentially "unknown" sourcecode to try and understand, getting all of it in a single diagram
doesn't help much, i need to be able to drill down further.

//Linus Nikander - li***@nikander.net

The DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit could probably do this relatively
easily.
It has a full Java front end, builds compiler data structures (ASTs) for an
entire
system of software with full name and type resolution.
From there, it can be customized to extract all kinds of interesting
information,
including what you are requesting. One example of extracted information
is a full cross reference according to the language rules; see our
Java Source Code Browser (and especially the example of it) at
http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/F...aHTMLizer.html.

To learn more about DMS,
http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Produ...MSToolkit.html.
--
Ira D. Baxter, Ph.D., CTO 512-250-1018
Semantic Designs, Inc. www.semdesigns.com


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